They reported wars, outraged monarchs and promoted the case for their country''s freedom. The pages of Irish Journalism Before Independence: More a Disease than a Profession are filled with the remarkable stories of reporters, proprietors and propagandists. Sixteen leading writers celebrate the emergence of Irish Journalism in this original and engaging volume. These leading media academics, historians and scholars join in what is a festschrift travelling the long Irish nineteenth century to 1922.

Their stories, narratives and histories illustrate the emergence of Irish journalism chronicling the evolution and development of the profession, and the various challenges confronted by the first generation of modern journalists.

The profession''s past is framed by reference to its practitioners and their practice. Readers are treated to studies of foreign correspondents, editorial writers, provincial newspaper owners, sports journalists and the challenges of minority language journalism.

The volume goes beyond Ireland to explore the work of Irish journalists abroad and shows how the great political debates about Ireland''s place in the United Kingdom served as a backdrop to newspaper publication in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

In his preface Professor James Curran concludes that the volume "advances by leaps and bounds the history of the Irish press".

The collection makes valuable and important contribution to our knowledge of Irish journalism - and like all good reportage it offers its readers a very good read.